Many Memories Many Voices (MMMV)
MENII Memories, MENII Voices (MMMV) is an engagement project led by Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with ArtsEkta and the Irish Museums Association.
It began with Museums, Empire and Northern Irish Identity (MENII), a 2021-2022 partnership between Queen’s, National Museums NI, the Irish Museums Association, Northern Ireland Museums Council, and University of Maynooth. MENII included autoethnographic interviews with people living all over Northern Ireland, during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
AHRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration Account funding has enabled us to make these interviews accessible, and to develop the partnership with ArtsEkta that has led to creative workshops and more interviews during 2023-2024.
The Irish Museums Association is helping us to organise best practice museum and heritage sector workshops, and is collecting ‘curator’s choice’ videos to explore connections between museum collections and the themes of colonialism and the British Empire. Check back here often, as we are continuing to add these materials to the website.
The MMMV Symposium is on 14 June 2024 at Belfast Central Library. The MMMV Exhibition runs there 14 June - 30 August.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Queen’s University Belfast’s Museums, Empire and Northern Irish Identity (MENII) aimed to understand more about the objects in Northern Ireland’s museums with connections to the British Empire and colonialism, to support community engagement with these objects, and to build collaborative partnerships to explore their histories.
For MENII, we interviewed people from across Northern Ireland’s communities, including people who were born or came to live here. In the interviews, they shared perspectives and memories connected with colonialism and imperialism and discussed meaningful objects from their own lives and in museums. The objects and memories provided a pathway through complex colonial and imperial histories.
Through this research, we found that attitudes to colonialism and empire are diverse, and identified important challenges. Collections with these links were acquired in entangled and sometimes traumatic circumstances, and need to be interpreted collaboratively in recognition of their multiple and powerful meanings to Northern Ireland’s communities.
Some of the research from MENII will be collected in an edited book: Museums, Empire and Colonialism, edited by Briony Widdis, Emma Reisz and Dom Bryan (Routledge, 2024).
MENII was funded by UK Research and Innovation Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
